


Escapism

by JazzRaft



Series: daemon / hunter [4]
Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-12
Updated: 2017-02-12
Packaged: 2018-09-23 16:42:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,155
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9665972
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JazzRaft/pseuds/JazzRaft
Summary: Every time he thought he should leave, Gladio would crane his head down and kiss him, so lightly, like he did now, and it was enough to quiet the beasts in both of their heads.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on [tumblr](http://jazzraft.tumblr.com/post/156241441212/for-the-prompt-thingy-20-with-gladio-and-ravus) for #20 in [this prompt post.](http://jazzraft.tumblr.com/post/156180067603/send-me-two-characters-or-more-and-a-prompt-and)

“It’s 8:30, I have a hangover and you’re annoying me.”

Ravus crossed his arms and glared at the burly man sprawled face-first on the coffee table. He hardly thought that asking after his health qualified as “annoying”…although he supposed asking more than three times if he was okay after already being told he was “fine” was a little excessive.

Ravus was learning or, at least, trying his best to. Sometimes he didn’t like the lessons that being “in a relationship” taught him, but he knew he had to commit them all to memory if he wanted to make it last. He hadn’t really known if he wanted to for a long time, but he supposed that if he was willing to learn the hard lessons, that must have meant he did.

Ravus made to leave the hotel room and leave Gladio to the silence he was apparently so desperate to have. It would have been easy enough to break his wrist out of Gladio’s grip when his hand encircled it, but the gentleness, and the apology that came with it gave Ravus pause.

“Hey… I’m sorry, it was just a really rough night. I didn’t mean to yell at you.”

He’d hardly call it yelling, more like firmly saying, but he supposed everything sounded like banging or slamming or screaming when you were hung-over. He wouldn’t really know. He turned back to Gladio, concern creasing his brow.

“Rough how?”

That was the right thing to ask, correct? He wanted him to stay, that must have meant he wanted to talk about it, right? Gladio’s thumb worked absent circles into the knob of Ravus’s wrist, head heavy in his hand.

“I dunno. Lot of stuff that just kinda hit all at once, I guess.”

Ravus considered his expression for a moment, gauging whether or not that was all the elaboration Gladio wanted to give or if he wanted to say more. Heavy bags were under his eyes, the hard amber edge of them softened with wear and regrets.

“What kind of stuff?” Ravus ventured to ask.

Gladio gave his wrist a slight squeeze, a request that Ravus obliged by stepping closer, close enough for Gladio to sigh deeply and drop his head against his torso.

“All of it,” he mumbled. “Noct, Iggy, Prompto… you.”

“I hardly think you need to be worried about me,” Ravus insisted, surprised that he might be when Ravus had tried so hard to make sure that he didn’t.

“I don’t _need_ to worry about any of you, but I do. Prompto’s barely keeping it together, Iggy can’t see, Noct is” – he snorted, not sure how to describe the prince’s state of malaise – “and you’re… I don’t even know what to make of you.”

Resigned, Ravus thought. Luna’s death had been something he’d tried to prepare for most of his life. He just never thought it would happen the way it did, _when_ it did. He’d always thought he’d have more time, and more time after that, and more time after that, until there was no time left. Altissia was the clock running out.

“You can’t expect to fix everyone,” he said, tentatively resting a hand on Gladio’s shoulder. _Certainly not me_.

“Then why do I still try to anyway?” Gladio sighed, weighty and forlorn.

“Because you’re their shield. And sometimes I think you forget that you’re anything else but that.”

Gladio was quiet for a moment before lifting his head, eyes narrowing past the splitting headache in his skull to better look at Ravus. “What else can I be?” he asked, as if he had all the answers.

“Human. That’s all any of you are, really.”

“And what are you?”

One thing that had attracted Ravus to Gladio was that he listened. He heard things that he didn’t say, things that Ravus didn’t even realize he was leaving unsaid. Clarity struck through Gladio’s eyes as he caught Ravus, fixing him in his sharp stare and daring him to say anything but “human” as well. Ravus’s arm felt unbearably heavy for a moment, the daemonic energies which constructed it stinging at the ruined flesh connecting it to his shoulder. His eyes strayed to the metallic digits of his fingers laying against Gladio’s vest. Gladio’s hand curled around it. It bothered Ravus that he couldn’t feel the callouses of his fingers against it. Gladio wanted him to look at him, but Ravus couldn’t bring himself to meet his gaze.

“You haven’t cried once for your sister,” the swordsman said anyway. “Why?”

“Daemons do not weep.”

The hollowness of his own voice as he spoke didn’t scare him. The confession itself did. It was something he’d been trying to hide from ever since he woke up, remade whole, but still incomplete. Even before that. He’d tried to take what wasn’t his and it cost him far more than a burnt limb. The Magitek prosthetic served only to remind him of his hubris, his failures as a brother and a commander and a man. It made him remember that he was less than human for all the sins he’d committed, using his sister as an excuse when it was really his pride that he’d wanted to satisfy.

Gladio turned his face to look at him, a single finger against his jaw. This had always confused Ravus. He didn’t really know how it had happened or why he allowed it to when he knew he didn’t deserve it. He didn’t know where his meticulously constructed defenses had gone when Gladio was suddenly striding so close to his own soul. He didn’t know why he didn’t trip the man and run. He didn’t know why he was trying so hard to say the right things, do the right things, do anything that constituted them having a successful relationship.

But then Gladio stared at him, giant paw of a hand beneath his face, and Ravus knew the answer to all of his questions. Even the one that Gladio asked him.

“If you’re a daemon, then what am I to you?”

An escape. A hope. A bonfire burning in a bleak, lightless world. He was Ravus’s laughter, his courage, his caring carelessness. He was all the things Ravus had lost somewhere inside of himself, and being with him was a desperate stretch to try and reach them again.

He didn’t tell Gladio any of that. Somehow, he thought he might know. He knew everything that Ravus never said. Ravus didn’t know what he was in return, but he knew that he wasn’t worth him. He knew that he should stop trying to pretend to be. Every time he thought he should leave, Gladio would crane his head down and kiss him, so lightly, like he did now, and it was enough to quiet the beasts in both of their heads. Enough to tell them what they wanted to be and enough to convince them that they were.


End file.
